TMNT: Unravelling
by princessebee
Summary: Raphael doesn't want this strange human in their home. But he can't deny, he's curious. Raphril. Set in the 2014 movieverse.


_So this fic will become redundant as soon as the movie is out, obviously, but I just couldn't resist. Inspired by the footage of Raphael knitting as directed by Splinter, then the image of Raphael looking as though he's about to wrap April in the same strip of red cloth. Written very quickly._

**ooo**

Raphael swore under his breath as the tiny human female was lead from Sensei's room by Michelangelo, his shell-brained brother rattling on a mile a minute, heedless of the unease that had permeated the lair ever since she had been brought back here.

Leonardo was uneasy. Donatello was uneasy. Splinter was uneasy. Raphael was freaking PISSED. And uneasy.

And the girl? Well, she was starting to look a little green herself.

But on and on Michelangelo prattled, oblivious as always, giving her the 'grand tour' of the subterranean structure they had crafted, over years and years of junk yard rummaging and makeshift assemblage, into their home.

Raphael watched them closely from the furthest corner of the lair, right where the light Donnie had long ago rigged finished and a tunnel began, hulking up against the wall and arms folded hard against his plastron. He could feel his teeth grind together, shifted his weight a little so his carapace scraped against the bricks, and glared at them, wanting them to feel it and know his displeasure.

On and on his nitwit brother shamelessly showed off every shabby, hashed-together, cobbled and improvised feature of their home – their _home_, their secret, private, no-longer-safe home – heedless of the rapid-fire flurry of emotions that flickered helplessly across the woman's face – emotions of fear and nervousness, distrust and suspicion. But nothing inhibited Mikey. He was too excited, too thrilled to have a real live human – and a girl at that – to talk to, examine, perform for. It was as if his little brother couldn't even _see_ the fine and subtle spasms that contorted her delicate features and so vividly signalled her distress, couldn't see anything beyond her pretty bone structure and soft pink lips and the huge, shining eyes…

… but Raphael could. Raphael saw it ALL. And discomfort coiled with anger, forming a turbulent union in his gut.

She thought they were fuckin' _freaks_.

She thought they were freaks and she was there, in their _home_, peering into all the nooks and crannies they had striven so hard to make comfortable and nice and homely with a look on her face like the whole thing was too ridiculous to believe. She was barely listening to Michelangelo, drifting along behind him, lingering at the alcove that served as their bedroom. Her eyes curiously crawled over the four concave forms that were their beds. Raphael's resentment simmered; that was just fuckin' _rude. _Would she like it if they came peeping in _her _bedroom window sometime?

Then, with a lurch of his stomach, Raphael wondered if he had remembered to tuck his _Playboy_'s back under his pillow.

He quashed the tide of embarrassment beneath the comfort of rage and stormed across the den towards the dojo, needing to get away from the relentless sound of Mikey's chatter, needing to escape the wide-eyed gaze this strange human girl was roving over _everything_ that was theirs.

The punching bag met his knuckles with a satisfying _thwack_ sound, he felt the force of his muscles push undeterred against the resistance and he immediately set about drowning out Mikey's nattering with a furious frenzy of punches and kicks, pummelling the indifferent bag without restraint.

It almost worked.

Unbidden, the girl's face rose in his thoughts, her face as it had appeared when she'd first caught sight of them - her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with incomprehension, her chest heaving as she'd panted – and a feeling Raphael couldn't name spread through his gut, unnerving him so that he increased the force of his blows, determined to chase that face from his mind's eye with the red haze that rose as he beat his knuckles raw.

It was only natural, wasn't it? To be curious? She was the first human they had seen up close like this, outside of battle, in clear light. The others were all curious – though they each dealt with it in different ways. Leonardo appeared cool and collected but stole fascinated gazes at her every time her back was turned. Donnie was already feigning scientific interest. And Mikey – Mikey was Mikey. Enthusiastic, unabashed and entirely uncensored. Typical. So what if he felt a little curious too?

So what?

Humans _were _curious. All that thin skin and fragile bone, exposed – and _hair_. That was probably the weirdest part. He wondered if human hair felt at all like Splinter's furry pelt. As weird as hair was, he had to admit they could do interesting things with it. And sometimes he liked the way it shifted and floated around girls' faces as they moved, all those frail strands combining in a gleaming whole, catching the light, weighty enough to cascade over their shoulders but light as air, lifting out of place at the slightest breeze. Just like that girl's.

Raphael froze mid-punch, sweat pouring down his brow, his breath coming in hot, ragged gasps. He couldn't fucking believe it. How had that happened? One minute his focus on the bag and the striking of each blow was pummelling that girl clean out of his thoughts. The next, she had taken over his mind. He'd ceased to even notice the bag, to feel the smack and sting against his fists.

Raphael panted, leaned a palm up against the bag and let his head loll forward as his racing heart slowly steadied. This was just embarrassing. She was only a _human_ for Chrissakes.

And she thought they were _freaks_.

Michelangelo's voice drifted into the dojo like a bad smell, clear as a ringing bell:

"And in here's the dojo where we, you know, sculpt these superior physiques to the perfection you behold before you."

Something like a titter followed it, light but bewildered, and Raphael felt a hot tension gather behind his eyes and his teeth were grinding again. What the hell was wrong with Mikey? How could he be so goddamn _stupid, _flirt and play up to her like that, without any shame? As if a gorgeous human woman could ever be interested in _freaks like them._

Barely conscious of the action, Raphael drew back his arm and punctuated his final thought with an almighty punch to the bag, a furious grunt escaping his lips as the tightly packed sand bound in leather succumbed to the force of his strength. When he drew his fist away, there was an indentation in the bag.

"And uh, as you can see, Raphael here also employs the room to work out pent-up frustrations."

Raphael froze as he realised that Michelangelo had drawn back the bamboo screen that hung in front of the dojo doorway, that he was actually _showing _the girl their training room, that that slight, slender, fragile little human who looked like she would crumple in his hands like rice paper had just witnessed his display and was now staring at him, slack jawed, her eyes round and full of awe.

"He doesn't have many other options since Master Splinter wouldn't get him that blow up doll for Christmas," Mikey continued in an exaggerated stage whisper, one hand cupped around his mouth as he leaned toward the girl, who seemed barely to notice him so intent was her attention on Raphael, mischief sparkling in his clear blue eyes.

Raphael's fuse lit, ignited by embarrassment and confusion. "Mikey," he snarled warningly, swivelling his body towards them, rolling his shoulders back, his biceps flexing of their own accord. "If you don't shut that trap of yours, so help me – "

"Chill, bro, I didn't tell her about your magazines," Mikey chimed in, as unable to stop himself flirting with danger as he was flirting with her.

Raphael was all tensed muscle, on the cusp of stampeding towards his chortling half-wit of a brother, fully intending to smack the silly smirk off his gob once and for all, when the woman at Mikey's side trembled and flinched.

And he remembered, with a hot rush of terrible feeling, how he must _look _to her.

Abruptly, Raphael deflated. The rush of fury receded, the tension uncoiled from his body and he stood there, arms dangling by his sides, staring at the human woman who seemed poised for flight, her luminous eyes brimming with fear.

Ashamed and strangely stung, Raphael turned away from them. "Just shut up, Mikey," he muttered, moving toward the weights rack. "Go away."

Michelangelo sounded almost disappointed from behind him – what, like he'd thought getting the shell kicked off of him would've impressed the girl? – but knew a lost cause when he heard one. "Sheesh, okay Mister Moody. Lighten up."

Then they were gone and Raphael was alone in the dojo, clenching and unclenching one fist, feeling the ache of the bruises he'd battered in, his head filled with the image of those brilliant, fearful eyes.

Later, Raphael skulked out of the dojo only to see the girl cowering on one of the sofas they'd assembled with dozens of flattened pizza boxes – that had been his idea, a labour-intensive task suited to his particular skills. He remembered the hours spent in construction, how clever and accomplished he had felt afterwards. Now, seeing the girl hunched up on one and knowing the world she came from was the sort they had only ever seen in the movies, the makeshift sofas seemed shabby and childish.

Michelangelo was in the kitchen fixing drinks, _still_ yammering away, while Donnie sat at his bank of monitors and surreptitiously glanced over at the girl from time to time. Leonardo must be in counsel with Sensei. Slowly, Raphael ambled into the den, hating the awkwardness he felt, hating still more he should be feeling this way in his own home and hating it most of all that one mere slip of a human girl could be having such an impact on him.

Then he noticed that the girl was shivering.

That her slim arms were wrapped tightly across her chest and her shoulders were hunched over and that her whole body trembled violently.

But she was calm. Calm and thoughtful, her chin lifted up high and her eyes deep and dark with contemplation.

And somehow that made him realise how much worse it could've been: that she could've screamed and shrieked and hollered abuse at them. That all things considered, she was taking things pretty well in stride apart from a little gaping and a lot of shivering. And that it was, despite their best efforts, always a little cold and damp in the sewers and she had only been, a very short while ago, taken hostage by a mob of ruthless ninjas only to have her entire perception of reality tipped upside down when pursuing her rescuers.

Feeling his gaze on her before he could contrive subtlety, the woman turned her head towards him and he braced himself.

But she merely looked back at him steadily, curiously, not a shadow of fear dappling those deep blue eyes. And the ghost of a smile crossed over her pink lips.

And his eyes fell on the long rectangle of red wool that slung over the mulched-pizza-box arm of Splinter's chair.

Master Splinter had said the exercise was to help hone Raphael's skills of precision but Raphael was pretty sure Splinter was having a little private joke of his own. _Knitting? _Knitting!

Knitting.

He had to knit.

Sensei's sly sense of humour was well known to all the boys; they had each felt the sting of their teacher's mischief fashioned into a lesson of some sort or another too often to count.

Whenever Splinter's cautions to Raphael to temper his aggression, to not rush so quickly into violence, to remember that he did not always have to prove himself were falling on particularly deaf ears, Raphael invariably found himself knitting. Usually whilst balancing on one leg or hanging upside by an ankle, but knitting nonetheless. Raphael's wasn't sure a less macho activity on earth even existed and Michelangelo made sure Raphael knew he thought so too. And giving Mikey a smack for that observation… inevitably led to more knitting.

Forced to focus on the careful inter-clicking of the long, slender needles and the steady emerging weave of the wool, the foolishness Raphael experienced was, he was certain, as much a part of the lesson Sensei was trying to impart as the delicate fine motor skills he couldn't deny he developed. Most of the time, it just made him feel angrier, his fury steadily gathering into a storm that broke the second Splinter declared the exercise over and departed the dojo, leaving Raphael to throw himself into a barrage of pushups, chin-ups and squats that would leave him exhausted and limp. Splinter had to have known. Maybe that was one of the objectives, too. Certainly, Raphael could rarely accomplish much afterwards besides the weary trawl to his bed.

But Raphael couldn't deny, as undignified as it was, he'd gotten kinda good at the whole knitting thing. And now he had this long, soft length of scarlet material that he'd left on Sensei's chair, thinking his master would appreciate it on especially chilly nights.

With great deliberation, Raphael scooped the material off his master's chair in one enormous three-fingered hand and gently hulked towards the girl where she sat, hunching his shoulders just a little, a subconscious gesture to make himself appear less threatening.

"Here," he said gruffly, trying not to stare into those vivid, intelligent eyes as he proffered the material. "Take this."

She gazed up at him and her expression was soft and inquisitive, vaguely wondering. She reached out to take the material from him and, as she did so, her tiny pale cream fingertips brushed his huge, rough mottled-green ones and she didn't flinch. Not even a little bit.

"Thank you, Raphael," she said, pulling the wool around her shoulders and crossing it tightly over her chest, a tentative but dazzling smile slipping up her face.

_She knew his name_.

And once again, Raphael realised just how much danger they had brought into their home.


End file.
